Private Lakes: A Fishing Paradise Ignored

It helps, of course, never to drift aimlessly. Drift all you want, as long as you are drifting over the edge of a nice, thick crappie weedbed.

Byron Warnes knew they were down there on his little lake near Mundelein. He`d got `em before, and he`d be out there to get them many times more.

``It`s a funny thing about these private lakes,`` he said. ``The people who live around them just don`t fish them enough. We actually need more people to take out the panfish. That`s just good management.``

Sure, he said, kids float bobbers off the banks. And now and then some guy will get in his boat and rumble into a brushy corner to find a bass. There will be a flurry of panfishing in the spring. But when the weather warms, the rich folks head for their country clubs to play golf. The lake sits unattended, and the fish grow into beehive swarms.

``Mostly, the really serious fishermen out here are the poachers,`` Byron noted.

Or guests, as we were. Oops, I forgot. This was to be a relaxing day.

So we relaxed above a weedbed--Byron, Spence Petros and me--jigging double headers in 4 to 6 feet of water.

Petros caught a nice crappie on his first cast, and that set the tone of the day.

Soon we were hauling in more than our fish box could handle. We had crappie, bluegills, perch, pumpkinseeds and immature bass, and kept only the larger panfish. We had to put the catch on a stringer and tie it to a shoreside snag so we`d have room in the boat for more.

We trolled over an area of maybe 100 yards, finding crappies here and bluegills there. Sometimes we`d get both, but mostly they`d be in schools, and mostly on secondary weed growth, the short fringe beside a thick weedbed.

If not on weedbeds, they would lounge off the neck of a channel or off the point of a bay.

We found that trolling with little jerky jigging movements worked best when the sun was bright and the water calm. But when a cloud came over and the wind brought wavelets, casting with a slow retrieve did the job.

We were using little pink or white jig heads of one-eighth ounce and lighter, the heavier ones on the shorter lines behind a three-way swivel. They were tipped with small plastic grub-like tails, white or yellow, Knight tubes or flat Mar-Lynn puddle jumpers. A black fly worked, too, though not as often. Each lure required a tiny split shot to help hold it down.

``You can`t believe how underfished these subdivision lakes are,`` Petros said. ``People just don`t seem to understand that most of them have fish. They get stocked, and that`s it. People forget. They think nothing`s there.``

Casual fishermen generally are impatient, of course. And under-equipped. It helps to know the bottom and have a trolling motor.

``I`ve caught 4-5-pound bass in places around here you wouldn`t believe,`` Petros said. ``The fish are there. You just have to fish for `em.`` As if to prove his point, we headed toward some brush and, in an hour, released a dozen bass. They weren`t biggies, though, and later we learned why. Returning to the dock on a different route, we spotted a large emerging weedbed smack in the middle of the lake. You could almost smell `em there, waiting for dressed jigs.

By then, though, it was late enough and we had done our thing. Mental hygiene had been restored. We`d unhooked maybe 175 fish in five midday hours and kept enough for a banquet or two.

Warnes said there are no words to describe what it means to live on a lake with maybe 50 other families who leave it virtually to him.

``I`m not a religious man, but when I saw the place I actually got on my knees and begged God to let my wife like it, too,`` he said. ``It would have been a shame to move here by myself.``